Northern Tournament: Cooley & Dunbar Back With A Bang

Northern Tournament: Cooley & Dunbar Back With A Bang

03/02/25: A vintage edition of the Northern Tournament in association with Advanta Wealth took place at Shrewsbury over the weekend with well over 60 pairs enjoying the glorious sunshine and filling the courts. Tom Dunbar & Seb Cooley won the main tournament, inflicting a first defeat on holders Riki Houlden & Hugo Young since the 2023 Kinnaird final.

As always, the field was split into a main competition and a festival competition from the start of Saturday's proceedings with all 14 courts in use non-stop from 11am onwards. Day One of the main competition consisted of a group stage, with four groups of six pairs battling it out to make it to the quarter-finals, which would conclude Saturday's play.

The field was a strong one, with 8 of the current top 10 ranked players taking part as well as several others just outside the top 10, some strong club players and some of the best school pairs around from St.Olave's, Shrewsbury and Ipswich. With matches being played as one game to 12, there was little margin for error for the seeded pairs; they all came through safely although not without a scare or two, notably Ed Taylor & Noah Caplin having to overturn a 1-7 deficit to beat Sam & Tom Welti (a late replacement for Chris Hughes) and holders and top seeds Riki Houlden & Hugo Young being pushed all the way to 12-10 by Laurie Brock & Tom McCahon. Both of the two losing pairs in those matches made it through comfortably in second place in their respective groups.

In Group B, second seeds Tom Dunbar & Seb Cooley wasted little time racing through their five matches undefeated, with James Toop & Olavian schoolboy Aadi Agarwal hot on their heels in second place. The final group was won equally comfortably by Charles Plummer & Sunil Tailor, with Alex Abrahams & Ben Merrett taking the second qualifying spot in convincing style.

The four quarter-finals can easily be divided into two separate categories. The Welti brothers produced a strong second game against Riki & Hugo but only scored two points in the the other two and Ben & Alex finished well with a good third game against Tom & Seb having been blown away in the first two, sending the two top seeds through with straight games wins. The other two quarter-finals - for a while at least - looked like they might follow a similar pattern. Sunil & Charles have produced a consistently strong set of tournament results in the last 18 months and started well against James & Aadi, winning the first two games to 5 and 9. There were already signs in the latter stages of the second game that Aadi was beginning to get to grips with the step up in level, however, and he and James - whose resilience and mental strength have always been a hallmark of his game - began to take control of the match in the third, which they won to 5. Despite Aadi struggling from cramp in the latter stages, it was a control which the Olavian pair never relinquished, turning a 0-2 deficit into an impressive 3-2 win. The final quarter-final was even more of a match of extremes as Laurie Brock & Tom McCahon came hurtling out of the blocks, playing with a speed, accuracy and intensity that opponents Ed Taylor & Noah Caplin were initially unable to live with. The first two games were won to 3 and 2 by the lower ranked pair, but Ed & Noah used all of their tournament experience, didn't hit the panic button and as their opponents' level began to drop in the third, they were ready to seize on their opportunity, winning it to 5 and getting themselves back in the match. In fact, once they had wrestled the momentum back, they never lost it and although the early stages of the fifth game were tight, one disastrous 10 point hand from 3-3 sent Ed & Noah to the brink of victory and another major semi-final together.

It was perhaps not a surprise that given the pedigrees of the top two seeded pairs and the difference in energy exerted and court time in the legs between them and the two lower ranked semi-finalists, the two Sunday morning semi-finals were both won in straight games. Tom & Seb continued their untroubled passage through to the final with a straightforward 2,4 and 2 win over Ed & Noah; Riki & Hugo had to work harder, in the first game especially, as James & Aadi picked up where they had left off the night before (minus the cramp) and the Olavian pair can be very pleased with their weekend's work, James reaffirming that he is still one of the very best players around and Aadi turning promise into performance and really looking as though he belonged in such rarified company.

The final was therefore the one pretty much everyone had been predicting at the start of the weekend - a first meeting between Riki & Hugo and Seb & Tom since last year's Kinnaird final, where the Westminsters finally brought to an end the 13 year winning Kinnaird Cup run of their opponents. The balance of power in the other two major tournaments - the London and the Northern - had shifted a little bit earlier, however, with Riki & Hugo winners of the last three Londons and the last two Northerns, while Tom & Seb had not finished a weekend victorious in Shrewsbury since 2020, although covid, illness and injury had all played a part in that time. What it meant, though, was that for perhaps the first time in their long and illustrious history as a pair, Tom & Seb were going into a match - any match - as the clear underdogs. Whether this had any bearing on how things panned out, I don't know, but what was certainly significant was that Tom & Seb had been able to conserve plenty of energy thanks to their swift and efficient progress through the competition and were able to attack the start of the match in fine fettle. Your correspondent was busy elsewhere for the first two games, but the balance of play can be pretty easily discerned from the scorelines: 12-8 and then 12-1 in favour of Tom & Seb. The prevailing view amongst the spectators was that Tom & Seb were returning lots of cuts and were at their imperious attacking best, finding a consistently immaculate and winning volleying length into the buttress and the hole, not allowing Riki & Hugo to get into their retrieving rhythm or to apply any rally pressure. The third game was different and much closer. Tom & Seb weren't able to impose themselves in quite the same way and their footwork was not as sharp as they began to tire. Riki & Hugo were still not cutting them down as efficiently as they would have liked but were getting much more of a look in during the rallies and starting to produce some effective winners of their own. At 10-10 the game and the match reached a key phase: if Riki & Hugo could get over the line in the third, would Tom & Seb tire further and would the balance of power shift, as had happened in the two five game quarter-finals the day before? One of the qualities of great champions is the ability to recognise and then to seize the big moments, though, and Tom & Seb did just that, taking control just when they needed to and moving from 10-10 to 15-10 to claim the victory and their tenth Northern title as a pair, 25 years after Seb's first appearance in the final and 23 years after the first of Tom's 13 wins.

One of the best feature of this year's tournament was the large number of pairs who stayed on for the main tournament plate competition on Sunday and they were rewarded with some excellent and competitive matches. There were impressive performances from some of the school pairs - Dan Ingram & Charlie Dinmore from Ipswich, Alex Sapozhenko & Bomi Adenugba and Luke Whitnall & Krivi Bhavsar from St.Olave's and Michael Draper & Louis Hursthouse from Shrewsbury. The four group winners who made it to the semi-finalists included some more of the Olavian school contingent - U16s Henry Etherington & Oscar Rushton and Tanish Arjaria alongside OO Morgan Pugh. They were joined by scratch pairing Alex Abrahams & Will Thomas and Salopians Adam Morris & Luke Lloyd-Jones, narrow winners in a key match over the Bhattacharya brothers. Morgan & Tanish won the all-Olavian semi-final and then went on to win the final 15-10 against Luke & Adam.

The Festival competition featured the usual wide-ranging assortment of Fives players, from Kent to Cumbria and from 14 to 70+. The Fives revival at St.Bees produced seven pairs this year and a noticeable rise in quality and it was also great to see a pair representing KES Birmingham, coach (and 2024 winner) Jon Shorrocks playing alongside sixth former Harry Phillips. Saturday's play mirrored the main tournament with eight groups of four or five pairs competing for sixteen slots in the knockout rounds. There was a delightful mix of youth and experience in the last sixteen, with a standout performance from Shrewsbury U15 pair Barard & Edwards, a heartbreaking defeat for St Bees staff pair Laurence Gribble & Brad Simpson from 14-9 up, Lancing Old Boys George Linfield & J-B Garway-Templeman producing a fine display to knock out the fancied (by Sam anyway) Ipswich pair of Sam Cook & Charlotta Cooley and the Salopian pairings of Christies (father & son) and Mitchells (brothers) winning emphatically. The final two quarter-final places were claimed by the Ipswichian Alexes (Yusaf & Williams) and two more school pairs, one each from Shrewsbury and St.Olave's.

Sunday morning saw the Festival split into three separate tournaments: the eight qualifiers battling it out for the trophy, the eight last sixteen losers (the seven who were still there anyway) gunning for Plate A in a large day-long round robin and everyone else back into four large groups trying to plot their way to victory in Plate B. The quarter-finals saw the adults begin to impose themselves on the school pairs. The Christies and Mitchells beat their Shrewsbury School opponents in straight games and Olavians Chendoor & Vasi couldn't find a way past Williams & Yusaf. The one exception were the Shrewsbury U15 pair, with Myakoshi an overnight replacement for the unavailable Barard. They took on J-B & George and kept a large crowd on the edge of their seats for three rollercoaster games, eventually coming from behind to win the decider 14-11. They couldn't repeat the dose in the semi-finals, however, finding Bill & Connor Christie too hot to handle, the senior Salopians cruising into the final. There they would find themselves up against Ian & Andrew Mitchell, who had to dig deep to overcome the loss of the first game and beat Yusaf & Williams in three. There was plenty of Northern Festival experience on display in the final and several previous wins between them, but picking a winner was not easy, a first game 13-12 win for the Christies merely proving how evenly matched they were. The Mitchells won the second game 12-7 but maybe in the end it was the easier semi-final win that allowed the Christies to edge the deciding game 12-10 to win the Malcolm Mitchell shields.

The round robin A plate produced some excellent matches and ended with the two unbeaten pairs playing each other in a de facto final, Ipswich's Cook & Cooley outlasting Salopians Justin Adie & John Tate to claim the win.

The final match of the day was the Festival B plate final and a joyous occasion it was, as the St.Bees pair of Philippe Imbert & Suproto Mansur defeated Shrewsbury pair George Jenkins & Connor Haswell in a terrific final to return to Cumbria with a win. Both pairs had played some excellent Fives to make it to the final, the Shewsbury boys making it out of their group by the skin of their teeth after a threeway tie with Siena Earles & Mille Parry of Shrewsbury and Betsy Laws & Millie Hodgkinson of Ipswich, while the St.Bees boys had had to see off plate specialist Tony Stubbs & Will Sillar in the semi-finals.

Our thanks go to Adam Morris, Andy Barnard, Seb Cooley and everyone at Shrewsbury for hosting the tournament so well, to Advanta Wealth for their continued sponsorship, to Andrew Mitchell for his organisational work, to the Shropshire weather Gods, who did a magnificent job this year and to all those who came and took part and made it such an enojoyable weekend. See you all again next year!

Quarter-Finals

R.Houlden & H.Young beat S.Welti & T.Welti 3-0 (12-1, 12-6, 12-1)

J.Toop & A.Agarwal beat S.Tailor & C.Plummer 3-2 (5-12, 9-12, 12-5, 12-5, 12-5)

E.Taylor & N.Caplin beat L.Brock & T.McCahon 3-2 (3-12, 2-12, 12-5, 12-5, 12-3)

T.Dunbar & S.Cooley beat A.Abrahams & B.Merrett 3-0 (12-0, 12-2, 12-8)

Semi-Finals

R.Houlden & H.Young beat J.Toop & A.Agarwal 3-0 (12-9, 12-4, 12-4)

T.Dunbar & S.Cooley beat E.Taylor & N.Caplin 3-0 (12-2, 12-4, 12-2)

Final

T.Dunbar & S.Cooley beat R.Houlden & H.Young 3-0 (12-8, 12-1, 15-10)

Main Plate

Semi-Finals